The $3k-4$ conjecture in groups $\mathbb{Z}/p\mathbb{Z}$ for $p$ prime states that if $A$ is a nonempty subset of $\mathbb{Z}/p\mathbb{Z}$ satisfying $2A\neq \mathbb{Z}/p\mathbb{Z}$ and $|2A|=2|A|+r \leq \min\{3|A|-4,\;p-r-4\}$, then $A$ is covered by an arithmetic progression of size at most $|A|+r+1$. A theorem of Serra and Zémor proves the conjecture provided $r\leq 0.0001|A|$, without any additional constraint on $|A|$. Subject to the mild additional constraint $|2A|\leq 3p/4$ (which is optimal in a sense explained in the paper), our first main result improves the bound on $r$, allowing $r\leq 0.1368|A|$. We also prove a variant which further improves this bound on $r$ provided $A$ is sufficiently dense. We then give several applications. First we apply the above variant to give a new upper bound for the maximal density of $m$-sum-free sets in $\mathbb{Z}/p\mathbb{Z}$, i.e., sets $A$ having no solution $(x,y,z)\in A^3$ to the equation $x+y=mz$, where $m\geq 3$ is a fixed integer. The previous best upper bound for this maximal density was $1/3.0001$ (using the Serra-Zémor Theorem). We improve this to $1/3.1955$. We also present a construction following an idea of Schoen, which yields a lower bound for this maximal density of the form $1/8+o(1)_{p\to\infty}$. Another application of our main results concerns sets of the form $\frac{A+A}{A}$ in $\mathbb{F}_p$, and we also improve the structural description of large sum-free sets in $\mathbb{Z}/p\mathbb{Z}$.